Lucullen Feast

Lucullus (Lucius Lucinius), the renowned Roman, spent the modern day equivalent of $90,000 on a dinner for just three people: Cicero, Pompey, and himself. He and his countrymen had inherited a tradition of fine food and fancy eating from their predecessors, the Etruscans. To emphasize the importance of earthly pleasures, a silver model of a skeleton was exhibited at their dinners as a reminder to enjoy the good things of this world while they could. Reclining on couches, they raised goblets fashioned from gold and silver studded with precious gems and toasted the genius of the Emperor. Olives imported from North Africa accompanied this Acocktail hour@, with blindfolded culinary experts competing for honors as they determined whether the olives eaten had been picked with bare hands or by pickers wearing gloves, as well as the area in which they had been grown. The first course generally included sausages flavored with Indian pepper, which had made an eleven-month voyage to Rome. Syrian plums mixed with pomegranate seeds were brought from the Near East. Local vegetables were garnished with imported salt pickles from Byzantium. Oysters from Greece or Britain accompanied the first course.

Live ostriches from North Africa and crocodiles from Egypt were paraded around the aristocrats’ table. To prepare for a dinner for six, the host brought delicacies from the far corners of the known world some 8,000 miles east and west.

Once, when he prepared to dine alone, he noticed the menu appeared dull. Beckoning his steward, he commanded, “give the cook orders to prepare a dinner in his finest style”. When the servant, expecting an impressive guest list, inquired whom he would be serving, he received the abrupt answer, “tonight Lucullus dines with Lucullus”, coining forever the expression, “the Lucullan feast” for those who know their own company is reason enough to create an elaborate occasion.

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